"The owl is associated with death, sorcery and the dark underside of life. To the ancient Egyptians, the owl represented night, death and cold. The Bible (Leviticus) says the owl is an unclean bird. The ancient Greeks, however, viewed it as the sacred symbol of wisdom, for the owl was the constant companion of Athena, goddess of wisdom.The ancient Romans considered the bird a bad omen, presaging death; Caesar's murder was announced by the screeching of owls. Besides death, the hooting of an owl foretells illness, bad weather and the loss of virginity of a village girl. In European and American folklore, charms could counteract the owl: throwing salt in a fire, turning one's pockets inside out or tying knots in a handkerchief.The Aztecs equated owls with evil spirits, including one regarded as the enemy of the human race, whose named was 'Rational Owl.' In Africa, owls are feared because they are instruments of sorcerers. To North American Indians, the owl is a bird of ill omen, either the harbinger of death or a messenger from the dead. The Sauk believe that if an owl is seen at night, it will cause facial paralysis. Chippewa medicine men stuff the skin of an owl with magic ingredients and direct it to fly to a victim's house and cause starvation. Folk healers in Peru use owls to combat negative sorcery. In Peruvian myth, the 'owl woman' is associated with shamanistic rituals and magical curing.In the Middle Ages, demons in the forms of owls attended witches, accompanying them on their broomstick flights and running errands of evil for them. Magicians and healers used owl feathers as a charm to lull people to sleep.In some cultures, the owl has long been respected. In India, eating owl eyeballs is said to give a person night vision. The Kiowa Indians of North America believe medicine men turn into owls at death."

- Rosemary Ellen Guiley "Encyclopedia Of Witches And Witchcraft"

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"Lady of all the divine powers, resplendent light, righteous woman clothed in radiance, beloved of An and Urac! Mistress of heaven, with the great pectoral jewels, who loves the good headdress befitting the office of en priestess, who has seized all seven of its divine powers! My lady, you are the guardian of the great divine powers! You have taken up the divine powers, you have hung the divine powers from your hand. You have gathered up the divine powers, you have clasped the divine powers to your breast. Like a dragon you have deposited venom on the foreign lands. When like Ickur you roar at the earth, no vegetation can stand up to you. As a flood descending upon those foreign lands, powerful one of heaven and earth, you are their Inanna."

- from the "Exultation To Inanna" ancient Sumeria, author unknown

As we head towards the new year, our culture grows more and more oriented toward the mysteries of the feminine. The Goddess is a powerful driving force of civilization, fickle but mostly fair, at times directing fierce lust and vengeance. She implores women to adorn themselves with facial make-up like sexual warpaint. She encourages lust and want, both representing an urge toward that as well as representing a force that absorbs and gains power from such emotions. In the truest sense, she is immortal, a lust that is never satiated that is fed over centuries over the bodies of humans who underestimate the fleeting nature of mortal existence. She is the Goddess that governs our world and our culture, the secret myth revealed upon itself through the daily existence of men.

In the East, she is known as Kali, the destroyer. Her blood-red lips and extended tongue have become the logo for the British rock band The Rolling Stones, a once-relevent, now geriatric group of men doomed to live out their adolescence until death. She smiles and laps up the returns. Hell's Angels stabbing a man to death in a crowded melee, attempted statutory rape at a friend's house, acting like an idiot on Saturday Night Live, she watches over and protects her investments. What might seem like a harmless rock and roll band works as an agent of social change with the Goddess' own seal of approval. Her earliest names are Lili, Lilitu, Loli/Lola, Inanna, Ishtar. Her reoccurring motifs are the owl and the crescent moon. Her temple is sacred prostitution, sexual exploration, homosexuality, transformation of the human form. An alchemical relationship with the human body. If Wilhelm Riech had been a little less paranoid, a little more of a team player (like Kinsey was), he would have gone far in the furthering of her goals. Instead, he remains one of the only people to have their written works burned by the United States Government.

In Mesopotamian culture the Lilitu were said to be demons that caused unwanted sexual feelings to arise... Pazuzu was a wind spirit whose power was able to chase away the Lilitu, harpy-like female beings with human-bird hybrid bodies. These demonic, lustful characters seem to be the inspiration for the Hebraic character of Lilith, who actually emerges from a parodic text written by someone from that culture. A famous image, called the Burney Relief, depicts a female figure whose identity is disputed. Her breasts are bare, and she has wings and the feet of a bird. Owls are by her side and in her hand is a rod with a ring in the middle. She grips it and stares directly ahead at the viewer...

Inanna and Ishtar are the names that were given to the Goddess in two manifestations of the Mesopotamian culture, and in Greek and Roman civilizations many of her attributes co-incide with those of Aphrodite and Venus (respectively). The eight-pointed star is her symbol, possibly due to the appearance of Venus as it occulted the Sun during ancient times. The moon is often depicted as her symbol, and culturally-relevant imagery ranging from Katy Perry sitting on a crescent moon to the Virgin Mary with the crescent at her feet seem to reference her power. In Jean Genet's memoir of living among the Palestinians, he mentions seeing a procession of individuals carrying a banner of a virgin with a crescent moon, and falsely assuming it to be the Virgin Mother of the Christian pantheon. He was surprised to discover that she was a local deity of the nearby community of fishermen, and that she was "Our Lady Of The Lake." As Isis, she gave birth to a saviour God/man long before the emergence of the Roman Catholic faith. Some say that an Assyrian queen named Semiramis is the basis for these myths, but it seems that she is yet another persona of history to be swept up into the character of Our Lady. Her ancient power predates historical conjecture.

She is a symbol of new life, and as such also the destruction of the old way. Those who stick stubbornly to the old ways will perish, not understanding how to exist in the environment of the future. She will provide opportunities for growth and change, and it is up to the individual to heed the lessons.

"If thou openest not the gate to let me enter,

I will break the door, I will wrench the lock,

I will smash the door-posts, I will force the doors.

I will bring up the dead to eat the living.

And the dead will outnumber the living."

- Ishtar's dialogue to the gatekeeper of the Underworld in the myth of Her descent into the Underworld.

Much like the Christian promise that the dead shall rise again at the end of time, the Goddess is in control of the undead legions. The weak of mind can be swayed by her guile, and she is never short of fodder for her Army. In the "Exultation Of Inana," she is descibed as the lady who rides upon a beast. In the Christian Book of Revelations, it is said that there is a lady in Heaven (the Virgin Mother Mary ala Isis) whose foot is on the head of the serpent, crushing it. One is also reminded of the story of Europa and the bull- a woman ravaged by a "sea bull," creating an unholy union of human and monster that apparently spawned the European peoples according to some obscure lore. She has always encouraged singing and praise, with the out-loud recitation of prayer being a powerful way to connect to the Goddess. She consumes the sorrow and praise of her worshippers and gives back in the form of love and understanding.

A form similar to the Burney Relief is what has been called the "Snake Goddess" of Knossos, a threatening Kali-like woman holding aloft a pair of snakes... researchers have connected the statue to artwork of both Astarte as well as Venus, but the exact identity of the deity depicted in the image is not known.

Some have traced the Goddess Worship cult back to the wife of Babylonian king Nimrod, Queen Semiramis. Semiramis was initially a brothel-keeper in a town called Erech, where she met Nimrod, and the two of them rose to power together somehow after founding a religious system based around astronomy. Semiramis was the controller of the religious hierarchy that was developed under Nimrod's rule, and she taught of a great serpent that was the world's creator, a powerful force of energy behind all things. The concept of the Lilith/Lilitu is different in many ways from the Goddess imagery that is directly associated with Inanna, Ishtar, and Semiramis, but both figures share certain animal symbolism as well as similar poses depicted in their carved effigies.